


Written in the Scars on Our Hearts

by piratekelly



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, M/M, Mentions of PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-17
Updated: 2016-04-17
Packaged: 2018-06-02 19:57:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6580243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piratekelly/pseuds/piratekelly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s not exactly a secret that Steve is a tactile guy, but when he thinks about all the different ways a person can be touched, he finds himself thinking about all the people who’ve left a profound mark on his life.</p><p>Steve McGarrett is not without his own scars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Written in the Scars on Our Hearts

**1\. Doris**

If Steve’s being completely honest, he can’t say that he has an abundance of clear memories of his mother, not with one hundred percent certainty. After she died and his dad sent he and Mary away, Steve tried not to think about her. He had to be strong for Mary and for Aunt Deb, had to prove to her that her sacrificing her one shot at being a singer was worth it. These things - sharing a room with Mary until Aunt Deb moved them into a bigger house, nights he stayed up late making sure the house was safe while Deb worked, making breakfast every morning - he remembers with perfect clarity. When it comes to his mother, it’s hard to imagine that he didn’t make a few things up in the years after he left Hawaii.

Despite all of this, there are a few things about Doris that he remembers with certainty; the way she brushed his hair off his forehead when he got sick. The lemon and hibiscus scent of her lotion, her soft hands cupping his face when she was proud, _so_ proud, of him that she couldn’t hold back. He remembers her laugh, and Pancake Saturdays, and trips to the North Shore so he could surf. He remembers loving her with a ferocity the likes of which he hasn’t felt since, so much that her death felt like a literal rug being pulled out from underneath him. His strongest memory, though, is of the kiss she pressed to his forehead that day, right before she walked out the door with the promise to take him out for driving lessons when she got back.

And she did come back. Just twenty years too late.

He isn’t sure how much time they’ll have, but he spends a good ninety percent of it so pissed off he can’t see straight, and the rest trying to keep her alive now that Wo Fat is free on the island again. The soldier part of Steve understands why she left, and can admit that if he were in that position, he might have to force himself to make that same decision. But Steve, the teenage boy who didn’t understand why it had to be _his_ mom, is angry. He feels abandoned, and lost, and hungry for his mother’s touch in a way he never thought possible. That boy _wants_ , so badly, to run into his mother’s arms and say whatever he needs to if it means she’ll just stay. But Steve is stubborn, and he’ll take his sweet time forgiving her.

She’s on a plane out of Hawaii two days after she set foot on the island for the first time in two decades, and Steve is left with more questions than answers. When Danny tells him that Doris fired three shots into the floor and not at Wo Fat, his stomach drops. It’s just another lie to pile on top of the rest of them, and he wishes he were less disappointed.

Steve has to be certain about those good memories, because when more and more of the truth starts to come to light, it starts to feel like the mother he lost never existed at all.

**2\. Brad**

Steve meets Brad while night surfing with some buddies when he’s 17. He doesn’t think much of him at first, just writes him off as a guy looking for a fun time over summer break, but Brad, he learns, can be adorably persistent.

Steve is just as guilty of flirting with anything that walks as much as every other guy his age, but the more time he spends with Brad that first night, the more the buzzing under his skin increases. He feels like he’s vibrating, and his fingers itch to reach out and touch. This, he knows, is not like all those other times. Steve _likes_ him, and that should scare him about as much as it doesn’t. So he keeps talking, keeps listening, commits every moment to memory so that he can draw on this if he ever needs to.

They spend all night talking, leaning back on their elbows as they lay in the sand listening to the other boys laughing in the surf. Brad is in California for the summer, like Steve suspected, staying with his grandparents while they move from their house to a retirement community, and looking for jobs that might help him figure out what he wants to do with his life. Steve tells him he’s planning on enlisting in the military as soon as he turns eighteen. Brad smiles, says it takes a special person to do such a thing, and Steve realizes that Brad is actually flirting back.

It’s late - or early, depending on how you look at it - the sun starting to rise when Brad says he has to go. Steve doesn’t get the chance to ask to see him again before he’s running across the beach, back to the main road. It’s only when Steve is gathering up his things that he sees a long string of numbers written in the sand. He grins to himself, commits the number to memory and vows to call him right when he wakes up.

That summer carries on as though it were simply an extension of that night. They spend days and evenings alike walking on the beach, learning things about each other that they haven’t told anyone else, and Brad’s smile never stops making Steve’s heart skip a beat. Aunt Deb is immediately smitten with him, extending an open invitation to come by whenever he wants, even if she’s not around. Steve pretends to not see her wink in their direction before she heads out the door to her next piano lesson. Brad just smiles like he always does, bright like the sun, and closes the door behind her.

Steve is, for the first time in his life, deliriously happy. The summer passes in a flurry of warm kisses from purple lips stained from shave ice, surfing lessons and nights spent grilling in the backyard, only to slip away into the house and spend hours laughing, curled up around each other on Steve’s bed. It’s practically a storybook romance, complete with declarations of love as the sun sets behind them.

Days turn into weeks that bleed into months, and just before Brad is due to go home, Steve loses his virginity. It’s not perfect, and it’s not everything he imagined it to be, but Steve wants this, wants _him_ , wants to share this with this wonderful boy who has taught him that keeping another person in your heart can be good, can light you up from the inside out and make you shine like the sun. He wakes up the next morning feeling like he could walk on air, curled up in the arms of the one person in this world who treasures him above all else.

Steve fell in love for the first time and didn’t get to keep it.

They date long distance during Steve’s senior year, racking up Aunt Deb’s phone bill so much that she makes Steve get a job so he can pay for his own phone calls if he wants to talk to his boyfriend that much. Steve imagines a not-so-distant future where he doesn’t have to pretend that Brad is beside him when they talk, because he’s actually _there_. He’s in a world where he doesn’t have to imagine Brad’s fingers carding through his hair, or the press of his lips to the back of Steve’s neck, or the way their fingers intertwine perfectly when they go for walks on the beach.

Occasionally they actually talk about that hypothetical future, in the only way teenage boys in love can. There are tentative plans to see each other during the summer if Brad can get his grandparents to let him stay again, and Steve spends the whole of his last semester smiling through every test, every late night spent studying, because it meant things were finally coming together. He’d be eighteen soon, would be able to enlist in the Navy, and Brad was coming back to him as soon as the semester was over. Life was, for lack of a better word, magical.

The problem with magic is that it’s an illusion, and reality waits for no one.

The year is 1993, and months after penning his name on the dotted line and kissing Brad goodbye at the airport for the second time in as many summers, legislation passes that makes his love worthy of a dishonorable discharge. He escapes the bunks as soon as he can and calls Brad, trying not to cry as he tells him that they can’t be together anymore, that they’ll both be unhappy having to keep this secret, that Steve signed up for this, and Brad shouldn’t have to suffer for it. Brad just says that he understands, reminds Steve that he loves him, and all that’s left is the dial tone.

For years he thinks of Brad, and wonders if he should have made a different choice.

**3\. Catherine**

He meets Catherine in his second year working in Navy Intel. She's beautiful, all long brown hair and a wicked smile to match the gleam in her eye, and he's instantly drawn to her. She takes the station directly across from him, puts on her headset, and gets right to work. He glances at her periodically, watches her work and organize her space bit by bit until she seems satisfied with the layout. She turns her gaze back to her screen and smirks.

“What?”

“Not gonna happen, sailor.”

Steve is instantly hooked, and that moment marks the beginning of a beautiful seven year friendship turned friends with benefits turned actual relationship.

Catherine is good for him. She's a stabilizing force when everything seems to happen faster than he can handle, a buoy out at sea that guides him back to where he needs to be. She's the one who encourages him to do BUD/s training, who supports his decision to become a SEAL, who massages out all his aches and pains whenever they get ten minutes alone. It's not just for him; she needs the contact just as much, something physical to keep them grounded in the present, a reminder that they haven't completely lost themselves to their jobs. It works for them, being there for each other. It works for about two whole years until, as Cath loves to say, shit happens.

The first time they have sex it's after an op goes belly up in Istanbul. It's only his second op on Seal Team Nine, and it's the first time he and Catherine have worked together on something so high profile. The helo drops them four clicks east of their location, a compound in the middle of nowhere used as a meeting point for arms dealing among known terrorists, and something feels wrong from the start.

The team gets there easy enough, but the second they start searching the first building, all hell breaks loose.

They lose three men that day, and Steve takes a bullet to the leg. Backup is coming in hot, but he's scared they won't get there in time to save the few of them who are still alive. Still, he keeps firing, because that’s what he’s been trained to do: fire at the enemy first, ask questions later. It’s instinct at this point, the muscle memory from all those early morning shooting and combat drills leading him as he lets his mind fog over. He’s doing his job, exactly what he signed up for, but that doesn’t mean he’s always proud when he pulls the trigger.

He makes it out relatively unscathed. The bullet hit him high and on the outside of the thigh, so after a few stitches and a quick check to make sure he didn’t sustain any other damage, he’s released from the med tent with strict orders to go back to his bunk and rest. When he gets in, he finds Catherine asleep in his bed. She reaches out for him and he falls into her arms. There they find comfort, but very little rest.

Things carry on like that for a long time, months bleeding into years, never exclusive but never really seeing other people either. Steve doesn’t know if Catherine is the great love of his life. If he’s honest, he doesn’t even know that he’s meant to have one at all. But she’s good for him, and he likes to think that he’s good for her, so he decides to see where it goes.

And then North Korea happens, and he heads back to Hawaii for the first time in almost twenty years.

**4\. Victor Hesse**

In all the years he’s been alive, Steve has been touched by a lot of people, but Victor Hesse was the only person who never needed to physically touch him in order to destroy him. All he had to do was pull a trigger on the other side of the world to completely derail the very course of Steve’s life.

When the Governor offers him the job, to let him lead his own hand-picked task force to keep the island of Hawaii safe, he turns it down. He doesn’t want to be here, hasn’t wanted to be since he was sent away, doesn’t need the ghosts of his mother (and father now, he supposes) following him wherever he goes. He has nothing left to give to this place, and he refuses to let it take anything more from his life than it already has.

Hours after his father’s funeral, he accepts a job he doesn’t want, and forces Danny into a partnership that neither of them is really looking forward to.

Steve hunts Hesse down with the help of his new partner, recruiting Kono and Chin along the way, and on his third day on the island, he puts two slugs in Hesse’s chest and watches him fall into the ocean. It doesn’t bring him the satisfaction he’d hoped it would, but, like all other things in life, he has to learn to live with it.

Weeks go by and Hesse’s body doesn’t turn up. It puts Steve on edge, not having that closure, so he channels that frustration and anger into other things. He starts with his father’s house, by painting over the bloodstains that CSU couldn’t get off the wall. He gets rid of his father’s desk, the chair, anything that was touched by Hesse, Hesse’s partner, or his father that day. He puts up a new coat of paint in the master bedroom and buys a new bed to replace his father’s, moving that one to the guest room down the hall. He has some of his stuff delivered from base, some pictures and his civilian clothes, a few knick-knacks here and there, and asks for the rest to be put in storage. After almost two months, the place starts to look a little bit more like home, but that doesn’t make him feel better.

When renovating the house stops being enough, he buries himself in every case that comes through Five-0, running himself ragged to the point where all he does when he gets home is fall into an exhausted sleep. It’s not healthy, going on with his life as though he’s not having scream-inducing nightmares and ignoring the signs of PTSD rearing its ugly head, but Catherine is incommunicado right now, and he has no one else.

So he runs and swims, losing himself in the routine of the punishing, hours-long workouts he’d become accustomed to in BUD/s and continued even after he’d become a SEAL. He works himself into a sweaty, limp mess, leaving himself just enough energy to shower and crawl into bed and hope for just one decent night of rest where he doesn’t dream of his father dying.

Six months after Steve took the job, Hesse is found on the island, and Steve has to choose between killing him and saving Chin.

Steve has done a lot of questionable things in his life, but it’s easier to rationalize when most of those questionable actions are sanctioned by the United States government. This, however, this is absolutely insane, and a couple shades of illegal, and he doesn’t hesitate. He steals the ten million from the asset forfeiture locker, captures Hesse, and saves Chin from a very bloody death. He doesn’t care that the money is gone. If it ever becomes a problem, he’ll take the fall, one hundred percent, because Steve will do whatever it takes to save those he loves, and these people are the only family he has now.

He learns to move on with his life, putting the Hesse brothers and all the trouble that came with them behind him, but he can’t escape the black handprint covering his heart where his old man used to be. That, he fears, will never go away.

**5\. Aunt Deb**

He’s thirty-six and doing alright for himself, all things considered, when Aunt Deb comes to Hawaii for Thanksgiving and changes everything. He approaches her cancer diagnosis like he would any other mission: identify the enemy, build a plan of attack, and neutralize the threat. Only, she doesn’t want to do that. She wants to live out the rest of her life on her own terms. Steve can hardly fault her for that, but it’s hard to accept, that the one parent he has left will soon be gone, taken by an enemy that he can’t fight for her.

Steve doesn’t know what changes her mind, but when she calls him a month later, it’s to inform him that she’s decided to try treatment, and that the doctors may be calling him if for some reason she can’t and needs care. He and Mary are on pins and needles for months, waiting to see if the treatment is shrinking the tumor, if it will shrink it _enough_ to give her more time to see Joan grow up, to rebuild the family they’d had back before he joined the Navy. He hadn’t realized how important it was to him to re-establish their relationship as a family, just the three of them, until the opportunity is almost taken from him.

He makes a concerted effort to call Deb whenever he has a few moments. Most of the time it’s just to check in, ask how she’s doing and if he needs to take some time off to come help her, but every once in a while he’ll call just to hear the sound of her voice. It’s a small comfort, listening to her talk about her days as a singer, but the wistful tone of her voice makes him ache. He wishes, not for the first time, that his mother’s disappearing act hadn’t had such a substantial ripple effect. Steve tries, he really does, to not let his bitterness seep into their conversations, but there are only so many ways to plug a leak before it explodes.

What it boils down to, he realizes, is that he simply wishes things had been different for all of them.

Aunt Deb comes back a year later, healthy as can be, and brings a fiancé with her. To say he’s surprised would be an understatement, but in a weird way, he gets it. After all, she’s done everything but hit him over the head to get him to take a damn leap for once, search for something that might actually make him happy and _keep_ it. He’s not sure he’s there yet, but he’s glad that Aunt Deb is. It makes him feel lighter that day, knowing that someone he cares about so deeply has found happiness in their own life and in a person they can share it with.

She’s the first person he calls when he decides to propose to Catherine, and the first person he calls when Catherine decides she’s needed somewhere else.

He stumbles into his kitchen the next morning to find her standing at his stove, watching pancake batter start to bubble on the griddle while bacon sizzles and pops in a skillet to her left. It reminds him of his mom, and the way she used to care for him when he was sad, and he doesn’t realize he’s crying until he feels like he can’t breathe. She pulls him into her arms as she gently guides him down to the floor, shushing him and whispering comfort into his hair as he leans into her. He’s twice her size, and yet he’s never felt so small.

It feels like forever before he comes back to himself, and he tries to apologize for being such a mess before announcing that he really has to get to work, but she waves him off.

“I called your Mr. Danno and told him you were taking the day off to spend some time with your dear old aunt.”

“Deb, I--”

“Nope,” she replies as she expertly flips a pancake. “Now out. Go set up a movie. We are going to watch TV in our pj’s and eat until we can’t move.”

Steve knows it’s in his best interest to avoid an argument, so he grabs some blankets and turns on the TV.

Hours later, with Deb leaning into his left side, Steve feels… not _better_ , but more like himself nonetheless. He’s never been able to master the art of self-care outside of knowing how to patch himself up in combat situations, but he thinks maybe taking the occasional day off might be a good way to learn.

He leans down and kisses the top of her head. “Thanks, Deb.”

“Just remember, Steve,” she says, voice soft and comforting in his ear. “Sometimes the things that seem the worst aren’t always so.”

When he’s sitting next to her bed four months later, holding her hand through the last moments of her life, he thinks about those words and agrees. Nothing could be worse than this.

**+1. Danny Williams**

It’s sunny, the day they say goodbye to Aunt Deb.

Steve can’t help but find it fitting. Deb was, after all, always a ray of sunshine in his life, radiating warmth and affection as though it were her job. There’s a light breeze, and he swears he can feel her fingers on his cheek.

Steve holds Mary’s hand through the service and he’s glad for it. All he wants to do is reach out and bring Deb back to them, but all that’s left is a beautiful urn and their memories. There’s nothing to hold onto anymore. 

Danny stands to his right, a solid, reassuring presence when Steve wants nothing more than to float away and forget, just for a little while. He’s wearing a suit but no tie, and if Steve felt like he had it in himself to laugh, he would. Danny just nods, a hint of understanding in his eyes, and of course Danny knows how he feels; it wasn’t so long ago that Danny had to go back to New Jersey to bury what was left of his little brother. He remembers how much that had broken Danny, left him listless and angry for days, and Steve hadn’t known how to help. Comfort has never been one of his strong points.

He feels something nudge his hand and when he looks down, he sees that it’s Danny’s hand brushing against his. Danny starts to apologize, but Steve just shakes his head. He reaches out, taking Danny’s hand in his own, and offers a small smile. Danny seems to accept it and turns to face forward once again.  
  
Steve has no idea what he’s doing. Partners of the work variety don’t do things like this, not even in times of loss, but for some unfathomable reason, he feels better, standing here with Danny’s hand in his. The rest of the service passes in a blur, and before he knows it, it’s time for him to move to the front to give a few remarks about Aunt Deb.  
  
Danny squeezes his hand in a show of support, and Steve thinks “… _oh_.”

\--

Steve has done a lot of spectacularly stupid things in his life. Danny probably has an itemized list of every single one, and probably a few he’s sure happened but lacks the evidence to prove it. It’s no secret that Steve does not make the best impulse decisions, but he’s never made one quite this bad.

Things had to come to a head at some point, he supposes. He just kind of wishes he’d thought it through first.

They’ve been dancing around this thing between them since the funeral two months ago, and it’s starting to drive Steve insane. Danny keeps _touching_ him, a hand to his lower back here, a pat on the shoulder there, and the hugging, holy shit, the _hugging_ , it’s like it never stops. It’s as though that one touch of their hands sparked a tactile streak in his partner that Steve hadn’t known existed. It’s getting harder and harder to hold himself back, because yes, he’s had a realization about his partner, and yes, his feelings are more than just platonic in nature, but he hasn’t figured out where he stands yet. Is he ready to put their partnership on the line like that? Steve has only ever been so freely giving of himself once before, and that was with Freddie. Steve doesn’t know if he can take losing someone so important all over again.

You would think that the tension that’s been building between them would have been resolved in the middle of a gunfight, or an interrogation, or Danny trying to talk Steve out of dangling a suspect off the roof of a building, _again_ , because that’s just the way their lives work. But, of all possible things, it’s a donut that does him in.

Kono and Chin have to be getting exhausted by how much he and Danny have been snapping at each other the last few days. This case has been driving them all nuts for almost a week now: a string of home invasions with no obvious connection among the victims at any level, and all their leads have been dead ends. No help from CCTV, witness statements, anything. They’ve been up all night, chasing what few leads they can glean from what little evidence they have, and Steve had been tasked with finding food at a truly obscene hour. Nobody is open at this time of night, but if there is anyone out there who can gently persuade someone to _be_ open, it’s Steve McGarrett.

“He has his wallet, right?” Kono asks, head pillowed on her arms at the computer table.

Chin laughs, but Danny isn’t taking any chances. They all remember the great “Danny’s Magically Appearing Bar Tab” Incident of 2012. “You have your wallet, right, Steve?”

Steve is walking out the office doors when he flashes his wallet over one shoulder and the middle finger over the other.

He takes his sweet time walking to the only place he knows will open its doors to him at 4am. Steve is not eager to go back to the office just yet, and the fresh air helps him calm down just enough to be able to work up a smile for Nani, who answers minutes after he knocks on the back door of her bakery. She gives him the first dozen malasadas that come out of the oven and four cups of steaming hot coffee at no charge, but he leaves a generous tip at the register anyway.

“Finally, donuts,” Danny says, throwing his arms in the air. “What took you so long?" 

Danny moves over to where the box is sitting on the table and picks one out. They’re still warm, the sugar melting even as he takes a deep breath of warm cinnamon and icing. Steve thinks it’s obscene, the way Danny’s practically rubbing it all over his face, but what’s truly unforgivable is calling it a donut. He reaches out and takes it straight from Danny’s hand.

“It’s a malasada, Danny,” he argues, before shoving the entire thing in his mouth.

“I don’t care, Steven,” Danny replies. “It is a wonderful, donut-like, sugary confection that I happened to be attempting to eat. Which I now cannot do, because it is in your mouth and not mine, a fact that I do not appreciate.”

Steve frowns. His lips are covered in sugar, his cheeks are puffed out, and he probably looks like, as Danny would phrase it, someone just told him he wasn’t allowed to touch a gun for a full twenty-four hours. There is no visible reaction from Danny, and Steve doesn’t know if he wants to punch him or kiss him.

“That’s not very nice,” Steve mumbles.

“ _It’s not very nice_ , he says,” Danny mocks, gesticulating wildly as he’s been known to do when he’s about to work himself up for a good rant. “What’s not _nice_ , Steve, is taking someone’s food as they’re about to eat it. Would you do that to Kono? Or Chin? Would you do it to _Grace_? No? Then why, for the love of the few things that are good on this island, would you take food from someone who hasn’t eaten in seven hours because that, my friend, that is not a nice thing. _That_ is not what we do in the civili—”

The wind in Danny’s sails is effectively taken because somehow, Steve’s lips have wound up pressed to his, and he can hear Chin spitting out his coffee from the other side of the room. Steve can’t really blame him; he’d probably be doing the same thing if his mouth weren’t otherwise occupied.

The kiss is scratchy and dry and awkward and nothing like Steve had thought it might be, but it’s still perfect, and he never wants it to end, and from the way Danny is relaxing into it, the feeling is mutual.

Danny pulls away and sighs, licking the sugar off his own lips. Steve is still so close that Danny can feel him exhaling against his cheek. “Did you just… Did you just kiss me with your mouth full?”

Steve pauses for a moment before responding. “Yesh.”

Danny backs away and rests his head in his hands. “Please finish chewing. Please, before you do anything else, chew and swallow.”

Steve does as asked, and Danny looks like he’s trying so hard not to laugh at him, which is a much better response than Steve had anticipated. Who subjects someone they have _feelings_ for to secondhand food? How is that in any way a solid case for Steve when it comes to moving their relationship forward. 

He doesn’t get to finish that thought, however, because Danny pulls him back in and this time, the only thing in his mouth is Danny’s tongue. It feels like they kiss forever, and it feels like coming home.

“I hate you,” Danny gasps once he’s pulled away.

Steve smirks and pulls him back in. “You want to get out of here?”

Danny sighs to himself, leaning in until his forehead is pressed against Steve’s chest, and he hopes against hope that Danny can’t feel the way it makes his heart thump harder against his ribs.

The moment is broken, however, when he hears Kono make an off-color joke about office romances.

“Yes, please,” Danny replies. 

Steve all but drags him out the door while ordering Chin and Kono to take the day off. The case can wait for a few hours.

\--

Contrary to every joke Chin and Kono make after that day, they didn’t actually leave work to have sex. They spent the day making out like teenagers on Steve’s couch, eventually moving out to the lanai for beers when the stubble burn starts to be too much. They talk about where they stand now, and what it means for their relationship at work, and where they go from here.

Steve decides that honesty is the best policy, tells Danny that he’s not sure exactly what this all means, but he knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that he wants Danny right there with him, all the time. It seems to be enough for Danny, at least for now, because he reaches over and takes Steve’s hand in his, interlacing their fingers. They watch the sun set on the horizon, and even though it’s every bit the cheesy romantic moment Danny claims to hate, he can’t stop smiling.

\--

They have sex for the first time after their first date, and if Steve had had any doubts about their relationship, they were all gone after that night.

It’s all kinds of imperfect, like it should be, and sex with Danny somehow manages to feel different. That night it’s all soft touches and whispered words; long, deep kisses and a desperate need to breathe. Danny’s hands sliding up and down his sides, fitting his fingers in the spaces between Steve’s ribs so that he can feel his heart pounding inside his chest. The sheets of Steve’s bed are wrecked, and he’ll probably be hoarse tomorrow from telling Danny how good he feels, but it’s amazing to be able to be himself in bed again. To be able to laugh, to smile when you see that person’s face resting next to yours on the pillow. To know that you’ll wake up feeling rested and sore in the best ways possible. Steve had forgotten how good this could be, how someone’s touch could drive him crazy and feel grounding all at once.

Danny’s hovering above him, smiling with his whole heart, and for the first time in so, so long, Steve is left breathless in a good way.

The next morning Danny nuzzles up behind Steve at the kitchen counter, chest to back, forehead resting against Steve’s shoulder while Steve throws together a simple breakfast of bacon and eggs, and Steve can’t help but think that waking up to mornings like this for the rest of his life wouldn’t be so bad.

\--

Despite having had Danny there for most of it, the first year after Aunt Deb’s death was hard. He and Mary and Joan were all that was left of the McGarrett family now, burdened with a legacy they weren’t sure they wanted to uphold. Mary and Joan moved to Hawaii a few months after the funeral so that he could watch Joan grow up and they could both provide a more stable life for her. Steve learned that the occasional day off just to sit on the sofa and allow himself to be sad was a good thing. Danny would join him if their workload allowed, and it probably should have been stranger than it actually was to lean against Danny and seek comfort, but it wasn’t.

They fell into a routine that could only be described as painfully domestic. Danny still won’t accept that Navy showers are a proper means of maintaining one’s personal hygiene. Steve hates that Danny can’t seem to stop burning frittatas every time he attempts to make them. Danny doesn’t swim with him in the mornings, and Steve refuses to sleep on sheets they’ve just dirtied up. They do, however, always keep Friday nights free for Grace and Charlie time, have barbecues on the lanai as often as possible, and laugh every day. It’s not perfect, but it suits the two of them just fine.

\--

A year later Steve’s standing in his backyard, staring into Danny’s eyes as he slips a ring onto his finger and pledges to spend the rest of his life with him, no matter what.

He does not cry. He doesn’t. But if he gets a little teary then Danny is the only person close enough to notice.

It’s a small affair – Five-0 and their significant others, Duke, Mamo, Kamekona, Mary and Joan, and even Jerry – and the house feels like home in ways it hasn’t in over 25 years. This is a good day, Steve reminds himself. Nothing could go wrong when he was surrounded by this much love.

He feels it, the last piece of his life clicking into place, when Danny pulls him into the first kiss of their marriage.

Danny dances with Grace at the reception, and the sight makes Steve’s heart swell. She’s fifteen now, and he can’t believe how much she’s grown. She looks more like Rachel every day, but she has Danny’s attitude, and Steve knows that only fun times lie ahead. He watches as Grace leans up to ask her father something, and Danny smiles and nods. She races over to him, long dark hair floating in the wind as a gentle breeze passes, grinning like it’s the best day of her life. Perhaps it is. She’s the one who kept bringing it up to Danny until he proposed, after all.

“Dance with me,” she says. He tries to beg off; he’s not much of a dancer, content to stay right where he is and commit all the joy he feels to memory, but she won’t have it. “Come on, dad!”

His heart skips a beat, emotion welling up inside him, because he’s considered Grace the daughter of his heart since long before he started dating her father. They’d never actually talked about what she would call him, because he’s always just been “Uncle Steve,” but to hear her say it knocks the wind out of him at the same time that it makes him want to weep with joy.

“Yeah,” he replies, voice thick. “I’ll dance with you, kiddo.”

Throughout the rest of the night, Steve occasionally finds himself caught off guard by the weight on his ring finger, and he can’t help but stare at the perfect gold band that rests there. There was a point in his life when he’d wanted Catherine to be the one to put that there, and a part of him still believes he could have been content with that. But he knows now that what he felt for her doesn’t come close to what he feels in his heart for Danny; that he deserves more than just complacency and safety. His husband, who tethers him to this world while driving him crazy at the same time, is the only person who belongs at his side.

Danny, who stands by him when a brutal case causes a relapse in Steve’s PTSD, is there after every nightmare, every flashback, every panic attack, holding him close so Steve can hear the beat of his heart. Danny, who yells at him every time he drives but always gives Steve the keys when they need to get somewhere. Who knows that Steve prefers his eggs over-easy, sleeping on the left side of the bed, and, when he gets the chance to sit down and read, historical biographies. Danny is the reason why looking back on his past doesn’t sting so much anymore, why the phantom touches have disappeared and all that’s left is him, warm and comforting and new.

Danny, who is everything Steve ever wanted, but never felt he deserved, is smiling at him from across the yard.

Steve can’t stop himself from smiling back.

\--

_6 Years Later_

There are always going to be bad times mixed in with the good, but Steve does his best to not dwell on the lower points of the years following their wedding. Instead, he focuses on how his little ohana of four people has grown into what it is now. Kono and Adam have a son, a three-year-old named Kai, and he’s the light of his parent’s life. Chin and Abby married two years after Steve and Danny, and they’re expecting their first child in the Spring. Grace is a junior at Oahu State, and Charlie has his heart set on beating his step-dad’s football records at Kukui High once he gets there. Grover talks of retiring, but they all know that’s a long way off for him. Even Steve, at 46, isn’t feeling the need to retire completely just yet. He’s got a lot more work left in him, and he knows the rest of his team feels the same. At some point they’ll have to start recruiting for a new generation of Five-0, but they can put that off a little longer.

Things are good right now, and Steve doesn’t believe in fixing what isn’t broken.

\--

Steve is sitting out on the beach behind his house, Longboard in hand, when Danny sits down next to him. The sunlight glints off the ring on Danny’s finger and, even six years later, it still does funny things to Steve’s heart when he remembers that he’s the one who put it there. It reminds him that they’re coming up on their anniversary. It’s Danny’s turn to make the romantic gesture, and Steve’s looking forward to it.

“I know that face,” Danny says, smiling out at the ocean. Steve has always been in awe of the way Danny looks in the light of the setting sun, the warm glow enveloping him like a blanket. Despite Danny insisting that he will always and forever be a Jersey boy, Steve knows in his heart of hearts that he belongs right here. “You’re thinking about something.”

Steve snorts and takes another long drag of his beer. It’s been more than ten years since Steve first made Danny his partner at Five-0, and Danny’s ability to read Steve has only improved since then.

“Just thinking about life,” Steve replies.

“That’s never good,” Danny says. “Are you referring to the number of times I thought you would be the end of mine? Or the numerous occasions on which I threatened to end yours?”

Danny continues to work himself into one of his trademark rants, but Steve just tunes him out, focusing only on the hum of endless chatter next to him. Steve has been beyond blessed in his life, most importantly with the sound of Danny’s voice in his head after all these years, a small comfort that comes with having been in such close proximity with one person for so long. Steve doesn’t always have to listen to him to _hear_ him. This is Danny Williams, who is a lot of things, but quiet is not one of them.

Steve likes to think that he’s attained a certain level of personal growth in the years since Aunt Deb passed, likes to think that she’s proud of him, wherever she might be. He likes to think she’s with Leonard, happy in ways she wasn’t in her time on this earth. But he knows, like he knows that the sun will come up tomorrow, that wherever she is, she’s laughing and murmuring a very satisfied _I told you so_.

Steve and Danny still sit out on the lanai in the same Adirondack chairs they’d had beers in that first day. They still sit and watch the ocean tide ebb and flow, only now they sit closer, Danny’s fingers occasionally brushing through the prominent grey hairs around Steve’s temple. Danny, who never stops making his heart swell with love. Danny, who Steve never thought he’d ever get to have, much less keep. Danny, who kisses him every night before they go to sleep and every morning when they wake up. Danny, who gave him a family, who loved him when Steve made it so hard to want to, who let him be a father to Grace, who soothed him through the worst of his PTSD relapse, who held his hand when little Joan graduated sixth grade. Danny, who always has been and always will be, the most important thing to have ever touched Steve’s life. Who, against all the rules of the universe dictating that Steve did not get to be happy, married him and dared the world to try to keep them apart.

Steve has Danny, who hasn’t stopped touching both his body and his heart since the day they first met.

He leans over then, presses a kiss to Danny’s lips and tries to convey every ounce of what he’s feeling in that one simple action so that Danny might someday fully understand how important he is.

“Just thinking about how happy I am to have you in mine.”

“That’s… that’s very romantic of you, Steven.” Danny blinks, pauses as though he’s choosing his next words carefully, but there’s nothing but love in his eyes. “What did you blow up this time?”

Steve chuckles and leans in for another kiss, feels Danny whisper “schmuck” against his lips, and smiles. His Longboard is lost to the sand, forgotten in his endeavors to pull Danny closer, to keep him safe and here and loved. Steve has stopped wondering when this will end, when the world will decide he doesn’t get to have this anymore, because if Danny has taught him anything, it’s that some marks are always meant to last.

Some will fade, and some may disappear altogether, but others? Those are right where they’re meant to be.

**Author's Note:**

> This was a labor of love from the beginning, when my beta MomentsofWeakness said "DO IT" when I brought up the idea of what it means to be touched by someone. She helped make this fic what it is.
> 
> If the first kiss scene sounds familiar, it's because I originally posted it as a headcanon on my tumblr when I was still oncetherewasapirate.
> 
> Title from P!nk’s “Just Give Me a Reason” ft. Nate Ruess
> 
> I can be found on tumblr as piratefalls. Come hang!
> 
> Comments are love.


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